


Red As Scarlet

by fourfreedoms



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Prostitution, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-26
Updated: 2008-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-24 03:58:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourfreedoms/pseuds/fourfreedoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen and Jared hook to pay for their Oxford education.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red As Scarlet

**Author's Note:**

> I said I was cutting [](http://balefully.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://balefully.livejournal.com/)**balefully** off after the last hooker fic drabble I wrote. But she has made a liar out of me yet again. Every time I set out to write crack it...gets all serious on me. Also, I'm not British, I'm sure it shows.

“There ain’t no bloody way I’m going to be able to afford the fees,” Jensen told him the day after they heard back from Oxford. He puffed on a cigarette and tugged his faux cashmere scarf tighter around his neck.

They hid out by the rubbish bins, the only place to avoid scrutiny for a smoke.

Jared sighed and looked down at his watch. He was the only other Oxbridge candidate at school and they’d been thrown together from the beginning when the other kids played footie and picked their noses. “You’re not the only one,” he said, watching the second hand tick by. There wasn't any money at home to spare when he could as easily go to the local polytechnic.

“Right, where does that leave us?” Jensen exhaled a cloud of grey.

There was no question of would they go. Simply a matter of how.

Jared found the how pretty quick when he went into London for the day with his brother. He picked up a flier on the tube before getting off at Picadilly Circus.

“No way,” Jensen said, nervously pacing back forth, menthol rolling back and forth between his fingers. “I’d rather top myself.”

“Do you want to go to school in October? Or do you want to be stuck here?” Jared shot back. Jensen’s face was white and strained, his normally rosy lips bleached the color of fish bellies. Jared sighed and said softly, “Look, it beats working in the petrol station all Holiday.”

Jensen’s teeth dug into his lip and he heaved in a breath. “It’s only for women, right? I don’t have to do none of that gay stuff.”

Jared laughed. “You’ll be a right proper heterosexual, don’t you worry your head none.”

They made enough in the first month to cover tuition, housing, and a flat screen TV that they installed in Jared's room, because his was bigger. Jensen bought a first edition of Sylvia Plath’s _Ariel_ and came home giggling drunk with it still wrapped in plastic sheeting.

They didn’t talk about it. Jensen told his parents he was working a chip shop and Jared said he’d found a job at the chemist’s. They were lucky their families were too preoccupied with their own troubles to come visit.

They’d had to get a whole new wardrobe. The agency made it pretty clear their scruffy jeans and logo t-shirts were inappropriate.

“Not what I thought prostitutes wore,” Jared said, buttoning up slim black trousers and a white shirt in a department store dressing room.

“Male escort,” Jensen corrected. He popped gum anxiously because he couldn’t smoke in the dressing room.

Jared eyed himself in the mirror and wrinkled his nose. “Let’s call a spade a spade, all right?” he said, before looking at the tag.

Jensen leafed through the stash of condoms he’d kept in his wallet since he lost his virginity in the 6th form. “Haven’t you read Foucault? Wording is everything.”

Jared shot him a look in the glass. “I’ll buy you an entire wall of Loeb classics if you never say that again.”

“Greek _and_ Latin, hey?” He chuckled and ran his eyes down Jared’s legs. “You should get those. All the high society matrons will want to pinch your bum.”

In their third year, they moved off campus together. They made the front room into a little office, their two desks next to the window, books and papers everywhere. Jared spent more and more time in the library, because he found he couldn’t work with Jensen there.

Jensen would inevitably start up with, “Panofsky oversimplifies everything. He fundamentally misses the basic point of lit theory.”

And then Jared would enter the debate. “I always thought Panofsky was extremely erudite.”

“That’s because you’re going for a first in political philosophy. Get back to your Devlin and Hart, you poor sod!”

And then they’d wind up wrestling on the floor, thoroughly disrupting everything so that nothing ever got accomplished. Jared didn’t mind, but he had been literally whoring himself for his education for two years now, he figured he’d better make it count. He guilted himself over the time he spent on the sofa, Jensen’s feet on his lap, as they watched Robin Hood and winced over the anachronisms.

“Do you think they’d toss us out if they found out?” Jensen asked, returning one night from a soiree, hickies blooming down his neck. He’d borrowed Jared’s tie to match his suit, a deep green silk that brought out his eyes. The client was one of the rare young ones who couldn’t be bothered to ask for a date.

Jared looked up from his copy of _On Liberty_ and watched Jensen walk about the flat, casually dispensing with clothing.

“Why should they? We’re not cheating, we’re getting good marks,” he said finally. “It’s a victimless crime.”

“I think we’re the victims,” Jensen pointed out, “or maybe the matrons are—falling before our horrid deviancy.”

“ ‘Obstinacy in a bad cause, is but constancy in a good,’” Jared quoted.

“Tacitus!” Jensen called out.

Jared stretched and said, “Very good, give the man ten points.”

“You’re the worst sort of devil’s advocate,” Jensen said and flopped back against the wall. “But I know it’s not all peaches and cream, you haven’t gone out with girl in, Christ, years now.”

Jared rested his chin on his fist. “Wouldn’t seem fair.”

Jensen turned his head, eyes intent out the window. It was raining and the streets were lit up orange from the glare. Jared looked down at Jensen’s hands and found them white-knuckled with tension.

He changed the subject, “What about getting a puppy?”

“Are you joking?” Jensen asked, mixing Stoli and orange juice from the dry bar they’d set up.

“I’m not,” Jared said, marking his place in his book and setting it aside. “I was thinking a Shiba Inu.”

Jensen made a derisive noise in the back of his throat and sank down behind his desk. “Let’s just make it through Michaelmas and then we’ll discuss,” he replied with an ironic salute of his glass.

Jensen was reading literature and he never quit complaining that between appointments and school work he’d never get any sleep, but he still found time to go out and party. Back in school there hadn’t been a whole lot of kids that could keep up with them. Now it seemed like Jared was the one struggling. It wasn’t just the two of them with their mission to get out and never look back.

Jensen had a steady group of friends through the flat who drank whiskey and debated post-modernism.

“Your mum and dad must be loaded,” they said to Jared when he ran into them in the kitchen. He blinked at them for a moment, before realization dawned. Jared caught Jensen’s eyes above their heads and made a face. Jensen colored and buried his nose in his tea.

Jared found he didn’t have anything to say for a week. He started playing football with a couple of blokes in his Western Philosophy class after that. There were six of them altogether, but if they started a game on the green, more and more people gradually showed up.

There was a blonde girl who always went running at the same time every day and the match always broke up to watch her go by. They jeered and whooped at her, but with her ipod headphones in, she pretended not to notice.

The other blokes often noticed how Jared didn’t pay attention to girls. He smiled. He was having so much sex there wasn’t really any room for something on the side.

“You’re like a bleeding celibate,” Marcus told him, juggling the ball on his knees. “It’s completely daft.”

They had extra tickets to see the Hot Spurs and they invited him. “Bring your mate—Jason—Jensen—whatever.”

He might’ve gone if he hadn’t had a client that same day.

Jared wasn’t sure what to do with money now that he had it. He'd been sending some back to his sister, saying every time it was a bonus from the shop he was working in. She always wrote back with a thank you and a tin of home-made biscuits.

Jared stared at the crumbs in the tin after he and Jensen had eaten them all and went to the little bookstore a few blocks from the flat. He walked out with The Joy of Cooking and Harold McGee’s book on food science. They were living uncatered, so Jared didn’t feel bad buying expensive Teflon pans and ingredients from the gourmet grocery. He started making stuff when he got anxious, the same way Jensen used nicotine and spearmint gum.

One morning he couldn’t sleep, too riled up, hard under the sheets, but unwilling and unable to toss one off.

He got out of bed and took stock of the contents of the fridge. When Jensen woke up, his hair tufted and sticking up in all directions, a ratty t-shirt on backwards, he was setting the table with laminated placemats and the plastic plates his mum had provided when he’d left home.

Jensen sat down and said, “What’s all this then?”

Jared set two Monte Christos down on the table, prosciutto-wrapped mozzarella layered between the two pieces of French toast. Jensen blinked at the food in front of him and said, “Tea?”

“Darjeeling or Oolong?” Jared asked, going back to the kitchen to grab teabags.

Jensen made a noncommittal noise and when Jared came back with a cup, he was messily eating his Monte Cristo with his fingers. “All we had to do to breed a little culture into you was turn you into a call girl,” Jensen said around a mouthful. “You’ll be demanding fine Argentinean wine next.”

Jared snorted and stabbed his meal with his fork. “I’ll leave you to be sommelier.” He took a bite and smiled. A job well done. He said, “I won’t be back this evening, I’ve been booked the whole night.”

“The lady with the cats?” Jensen asked after inhaling his tea. Jared winced and nodded. Jensen took another bite and said, “Will you be all right for your exam tomorrow?”

Jared waved a hand. “It’ll just be a few essays contrasting John Locke and Jeremy Bentham. Blah blah there is no natural law blah blah.”

Jensen held a copy of Luis Borges in front of his face and cried, “Get it away, get it away.”

“Pompous arse,” Jared smiled again, trying to fight the pressure that steadily built in his chest in anticipation of that night. “Don’t get into my feta while I’m gone.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, dear,” Jensen said, already sinking into his book as Jared left for his bedroom.

When Jared left the little safe haven they’d built for themselves, he couldn’t bring himself to regret it. Or to wish that it could be undone. He thought of how his mum would cry if she knew and he weighed it against the text books he had lined up against his walls. His children would want for nothing.

Jensen came home tipsy and tetchy a few weeks from the winter hols. The drunkenness wasn’t out of the ordinary. He’d been stealing a tipple from his dad’s liquor cabinet since they were fourteen. But Jared wasn’t sure what to do about the attitude.

“I’ve been trying for this girl this whole term, right?” He said, palm flat against the cabinets to hold himself upright. Jared hovered in the doorway of the kitchen. Jensen’s eyes were slightly unfocused, his speech tripping and lilting, “And she finally gives me an opening, and I can’t—I can’t sodding do it.”

Jared pursed his lips and shoved past Jensen. “Just drink some water and take a paracetamol. Everything will be fine in the morning.”

“Are you listening to me?” Jensen asked, whirling about and almost overbalancing. Jared had already stuck a glass under the tap. He leafed through the cupboard above the sink for painkillers with the other hand.

“I’m listening,” he said softly. Jensen came up behind him, chest sealed tight to his back, and reached around to shut the tap off. Jared hadn’t even noticed how the water overflowed the lip of glass and spilled down over his fingers. He set the full glass down on the counter.

Jared’s breath left his body when he felt Jensen’s chapped lips skate across the bare patch of skin just above his shirt collar. He turned in the confines of Jensen’s arms and said, “What are you—”

Jensen cut him off with a kiss, pressed him back into the sink so that the counter was a sharp bite into the small of his back. Jared’s hands fluttered in the air before finally settling on Jensen’s sides.

“Kiss me back,” Jensen told him before Jared could push him away, and something about his tone, hungry and needy, the edge put there by a pack of cigarettes a day, was unchallengeable.

Jared dipped his head and parted his lips. Jensen tasted like expensive alcohol and cheap chocolate. His scarf was still wrapped around his neck, tickling Jared’s bare throat.

Jensen pressed into Jared until they were lined up head to foot, heart practically beating in Jared’s chest. The only sound in the small cold kitchen was their heavy breaths. Jared slipped strong fingers inside Jensen’s waistband, sketching out the groove in his hip, passing over velvet bare skin.

Jensen’s tongue was quick on the inside of Jared’s lip and under the roof of Jared’s mouth. Little frissons of electricity ran down Jared’s nerves when Jensen flicked their tongues together, before pushing deep into his mouth and then pulling back again. It was warm, even though they kept the heater barely higher than 18 degrees to save on heating bills. Old habits died hard.

Jared’s shirt stretched, accommodating to the demands of Jensen’s fingers in the fabric until it would forever bear the imprints of his touch. “Kiss me back, fool,” Jensen reiterated, callused palm coming up to cup Jared’s jaw.

Jared shoved him back, but followed after chasing away Jensen’s startled look with a meaningful touch down his chest. Jensen smiled at him, lips and cheeks flooded with color like it was the first time Jeff had scored them puff all over again.

He pushed Jensen out of the kitchen, stealing kisses as they stumbled to Jensen’s bedroom. It was the closest, and Jensen had a fancy wrought-iron headboard. They landed flat on the bed, cushions and covers sighing under their combined body weight. Jared braced himself on his elbows above Jensen, kissing with just the barest press of lips, sliding together and apart until they stung and burned with two much sensation.

Jensen tugged him down, thighs coming up to bracket his hips. Jared was hard and the slip and catch of denim on denim nearly knocked the air out of his lungs. He felt the same in Jensen when his bitten-off nails dug hard into his shoulders.

Jensen cursed and reached between them, trying to kiss Jared’s neck and pull his jeans apart at the same time. When Jensen’s tongue skimmed over his pulse, Jared moaned.

“Let me just—let me—” Jensen intoned, eyelids fluttering. He finally got his fist wrapped tight around their dicks, and Jared thrust down against him. Jensen shuddered like fabric in the wind.

“God,” Jared breathed. They worked against each other, more breathing each other’s air than kissing— recklessly struggling towards orgasm. Jared finally pulled his mouth away, dropping his head to Jensen’s shoulder, lips open over his collarbone.

Jensen had a hand wrapped tight around his bicep, and it flexed with every dip and thrust of Jared’s hips. Jared was so close. He was teetering on the edge, Jensen’s dick sliding against his was the last bastion of pleasure.

“You’re the only thing that feels good anymore,” Jensen said. Jared felt Jensen’s ragged voice vibrating through his throat. He came on Jensen’s belly and fist, choking on his own air.

Jensen’s hand closed so tight around his arm Jared could feel his blood pressure beat against the skin. He scraped his teeth against Jensen’s neck, knowing that his clients would see the red welts the next time he went out. They wouldn’t know what they were looking at.

Jensen arched underneath him, whispering obscenities, until Jared felt sticky wetness against his hip.

He rolled to the side to lie flat on his back, blinking against the moonlight flooding the room. Jensen’s eyelashes had never looked longer. He heard rather than saw Jensen moving next to him. The soft blanket and sheets were tugged out from underneath him and then pulled up over them both. His feet were so cold they burned. He meant to say something, anything, but before he could even wonder ‘what now?’ he was asleep.

Jared woke up the next morning with Jensen’s arm banded tight around him and his head resting right between Jared’s shoulder blades. Jared had ten chapters of Kant and an outing later that night. Jensen’s breath puffed out steadily against his back and Jared had found the comfy spot on the bed.

He didn’t move.

*  
Fin.

The title is from _The Book of Common Prayer_ : "For tho' our sins be as red as scarlet, they shall be made white as snow." 


End file.
